A few months ago, my pals over at Serious Eats asked if I’d be interested in delving into a bit of Cookie Science to explain how ingredients like butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda and baking powder function within a recipe, along with an in depth look at how techniques like creaming until “light and fluffy” truly work.

Over a period of six weeks, I blasted through twenty-five pounds of sugar, fifteen pounds of flour, twelve pounds of butter, six dozen eggs, and a quart of vanilla extract. Not only did I walk away with a better understanding of cookies in general, I came to know the ins and outs of three recipes in particular: oatmeal, gingersnaps, and old fashioned sugar cookies.

While the articles focused on general rules of thumb that could be applied to most any cookie, I couldn’t help but learn all the ins and outs of those three recipes in particular. For example, when it comes to sugar cookies: less is more.

While extra rich local and European butters made for a better tasting dough, they baked up indistinguishable from cookies that started with grocery store brands. Likewise, expensive “sparkling” sugars looked picture perfect prior to baking, but the extra large crystals formed a heavy crust that browned too quickly, distracting from the soft and chewy texture within.

Simple granulated sugar worked best, giving the cookies a snowy exterior before melting into a whisper thin shell (alternately, for those who prefer a bit of crunch, I discovered dunking the portioned dough in ice water helps achieve a crisper coat).

Curiously, cookies rolled in sanding sugar or nonpareils baked up a little fluffier— perhaps because of their slightly alkaline pH.

Whatever finishing touch you choose, these old fashioned sugar cookies will always be chewy and soft, with a hint of crispy caramelization only around the very edges. My brother is crazy about them after they’ve softened for a day or two in an airtight container, but I think they’re best fresh out of the oven. To that end, bake only what you need and refrigerate the rest; this dough will keep for up to a week.

Adjust oven rack to the middle position, preheat to 350°, and line two aluminum baking sheets with parchment (not wax!) paper.

Combine butter, sugar, baking powder, kosher salt, nutmeg, and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on low to moisten, increase to medium and beat until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Crack in the egg and continue beating until smooth, about a minute more, pausing halfway through to scrape the bowl with a flexible spatula. Resume mixing on low, sprinkle in flour, and continue until a thick dough is formed.

Divide into twenty six 1-ounce portions with a 2-Tablespoon scoop (the plain dough can be refrigerated in a zip-top bag for one week, or frozen up to a month; simply soften to room temperature before using). To help the decorative coating stick, roll each ball of dough until smooth and round, then tumble in a bowl of sanding sugar, nonpareils, or sugar until thoroughly coated.

Arrange on a parchment lined baking sheet, leaving 2” between each, and bake until pale gold around the edges but still puffy and soft in the middle, about 15 minutes. Cool directly on the baking sheet until firm, about 10 minutes, and enjoy warm. In an airtight container, leftovers will keep up to a week at room temperature.

*For those who prefer baking with grams or cup measurements, check out the original version posted on Serious Eats.

I may be the kinda girl that makes her own Fruit Roll-Ups and Reese’s Cups, but a few of my favorite sweets elude the DIY approach. At the top of that list: Cadbury Mini Eggs.

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I may be the kinda girl that makes her own Fruit Roll-Ups and Reese’s Cups, but a few of my favorite sweets elude the DIY approach.

At the top of that list, Cadbury Mini Eggs. There’s just no way to tumble lopsided blobs of milk chocolate with a liquid candy shell unless you have the help of industrial equipment. Perhaps I’ll crack the code someday, but in the meantime I’m willing to give Mini Eggs a pass.

I somehow made it all the way to culinary school before I’d ever tried one. My best friend had what seemed like a bizarre obsession with Mini Eggs, and she had a special ritual too. She’s put an unopened bag on my dashboard whenever we went out for a spring drive, leaving them in the sun while we’d shop for groceries. When we’d come back, the Mini Egg shells would be glossy and bright, but still crunchy against the melty chocolate inside.

I was hooked.

These cookies channel that same melty mojo, but with plenty of salt to balance the candy coated sweetness. Just don’t chomp down too soon, the oven does a heckuva lot more damage than the dashboard.

These cookies taste as dark as they look, with a brownie-like texture and richness. If you’re not a fan of Mini-Eggs, M&Ms and Reese’s Pieces offer a similar texture and pop of color. For a more natural approach, chunks of chopped white chocolate beautifully contrast the deep, dark dough.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder together on a large sheet of wax paper. With a hand or stand mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, white sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and vanilla for just a minute. None of that light and fluffy business.

Add the egg and mix until thoroughly incorporated, pausing to scrape down the bowl as needed. Sprinkle in the flour and cocoa and mix until combined, but don’t pitch the wax paper just yet. Add 3/4 of the Mini Eggs, 7 ounces if you want to be precise, and mix a few seconds more.

With a large cookie scoop (about 2 1/2 Tablespoons), drop roughly 16 scoops of dough onto the wax paper. Place 1 Mini Egg on each piece of dough, then roll into a smooth ball to partially cover the Mini Egg. If you’d rather not bake the cookies all at once, refrigerate the scooped dough in a zip-top bag until needed, up to a week (warm to room temperature before baking).

Arrange on a baking sheet and gently flatten the cookie with the bottom of a drinking glass, or leave ‘em alone for a batch of impressively thick and chunky cookies.

Top the cookies with the remaining Mini Eggs and bake until puffed and slightly firm around the edges. About 8 minutes for a fudgey texture, and 10 minutes for a chewy, chocolate chip cookie-like texture.

Cool directly on the baking sheet for a few minutes, then loosen the cookies with a metal spatula. Prepare to reenact a “Got Milk” commercial if you don’t have a tall glass on hand.

Store the cookies up to 3 days in an airtight container.Updated to add: many comments left on this post were subsequently lost in a database crash, but they live on with Google’s cached version.

Don’t get the wrong idea— there isn’t a BraveTot on the way (sorry, Mom). It’s just that I’ve never had the chance to work up an appetite. In a restaurant, you spend the day grazing on little bits of everything, so you’re never quite hungry. After eight to twelve hours of sugary snacks, dessert’s the last thing on my mind.

But now that I’m home, without a menu to maintain, everything sweet sounds good again. A craving hits, and suddenly I start throwing ingredients around in an indiscriminate whirlwind of sugar and flour. No plan, no purpose, no stress.

I don’t have to fret that something might seems too rustic for its price tag, or that it’ll clash with other flavors on the menu. I don’t have to worry about chocolate melting in the heat, or whether I made enough to last the night.

I’ve got nothing but my own cravings in mind, and that’s how these little cookies came about. They taste like Almond Joy, if Almond Joy had as much almond as coconut, a big hit of salt, and legit dark chocolate.

I love the look of drizzled chocolate over the top, but you could just as easily chop the bar and mix it into the dough.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Sift the flour and toss with the coconut flakes.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the almond butter, butter, brown sugar, white sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, vanilla and almond extracts. Mix on low speed to moisten, then increase to medium and beat one minute.

Add the egg and continue creaming until smooth, pausing to scrape the bowl and beater with a flexible spatula as needed. Reduce speed to low, add the coconut/flour, and continue mixing until the dry bits disappear.

Use a large cookie scoop (2 1/2 Tablespoons) to portion the thick dough into 18 pieces. Roll each one smooth and round, and arrange on two baking sheets. For thick and chewy cookies, leave the dough-balls alone. For thin and crispy cookies, flatten with a drinking glass. You can see the hodge-podge of thicknesses below.

If you like, sprinkle the dough with an extra pinch of salt. Bake until the cookies are puffed and firm around the edges, though their centers will still seem a little steamy and damp; about 15 minutes.

While the cookies cool, gently melt the chocolate (if you melt it over a water bath and keep the chocolate below 95°, it will stay in good temper). Transfer to a small parchment cone, snip the end and drizzle the cookies with melted chocolate.

The cookies will keep for a few days in an airtight container, with a sheet of wax paper between the layers.

Split a vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds, and save them for another recipe or for flavoring the marshmallows. If you have an empty vanilla bean pod hanging around from another project, this is a great way to use it up. You by no means need a freshly split bean.

In a roughly 2 quart pot, combine the milk and cream with the empty vanilla pod. Bring to a simmer, then shut off the heat and steep for roughly one hour (or up to overnight, covered and refrigerated).

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 300°. If using a big chunk of white chocolate, give it a rough chop first. Thin bars or discs can be used as-is. Put the white chocolate in a glass or ceramic baking dish, toss it in the oven and “roast,” stirring every 10 minutes or so.

It may seem lumpy and crumbly as you stir, but that’s okay. Keep going until it takes on toasted almond color, about 30 minutes total.

Return the vanilla-milk to a simmer, add the caramelized white chocolate and whisk until smooth. Season with a pinch of salt, ladle into mugs and enjoy.

Well, at least not for an over-the-top occasion like New Year’s Eve. So if your resolution involves giving up or scaling back on dessert, you’d better stop scrolling now.

Chocolate cakes typically rely on deep, dark ingredients like black coffee, brown sugar, and Bourbon vanilla. Delicious, but not exactly in line with the bubbly spirit of New Year’s Eve. I wanted a cake that would pair better with champagne than cappuccino, something along the lines of a chocolate covered strawberry (but seasonally appropriate).

To make this chocolate cake feel festive and bright, I ditched the usual one-two punch of coffee and vanilla for cranberry juice and rose water. The same way coffee underscores the roasted bitterness of chocolate, cranberry teases out its natural fruit flavor. Even better, it tenderizers in a way that puts buttermilk to shame.

Rose flower water has a bad reputation, often used indiscriminately to overpower delicate flavors like yogurt or goat cheese. But it can’t bully dark chocolate. Against that sort of bitter intensity, its aromatics simply round out the flavor. It adds dimension like vanilla, but in a way that feels airy rather than deep.

Together the cranberry and rose make a cake that tastes every bit as chocolatey and complex as a traditional recipe, minus that earthy darkness. To play up the cranberry flavor, I paired it with Cranberry Swiss Buttercream and Cranberry Ganache.

Even if you hate rose flower water, I hope you’ll trust me on this one. You won’t taste the rose itself, but without its magic the flavor of the whole cake falls flat. If you haven’t used it before, you can pick a bottle up for about two bucks. You’ll find it in the international aisle of larger grocery chains, in upscale liquor stores, from your local Middle Eastern or Indian market, and online.

Preheat the oven to 350° and line three 8” by 2” cake pans with parchment rounds; grease lightly.

Roughly chop the chocolate and place in a medium bowl; sift the cocoa powder over top. Meanwhile, bring the cranberry juice to a simmer in a 3 quart stainless steel pot. When it begins to bubble, shut off the heat and add the chocolate/cocoa all at once. Whisk to form a smooth paste, then stir in the rose flower water.

Using the same bowl and sieve from before, sift the flour and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, combine the sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the eggs and mix for a minute on low speed to moisten. Increase the speed to medium and whip until fluffy and light, about 8 minutes.

Reduce speed to medium-low and splash in the melted butter a little at a time, then whip in the chocolate-cranberry paste. When well combined, reduce speed to the lowest setting. Add one-third of the flour followed by one-third of the milk, alternating between the two until completely incorporated.

Stir the batter once or twice with a flexible spatula, then divide between the prepared pans (27 ounces each). Bake until the cakes are puffed and somewhat firm to the touch, though your finger may leave a slight impression; about 40 minutes.

Let the cakes stand at room temperature for 10 minutes, then loosen the edges with a knife, invert onto a wire rack, and cool until no trace of warmth remains. I like to leave the pans on top; it takes longer to cool this way, but traps steam to retain moisture.

Level the cakes with a serrated knife. Top each with a heaping cup of freshly whipped Cranberry Buttercream and spread into an even layer.

Leave the sides exposed for a rustic look, or give the cake a crumb coat and fully frost. For more detailed information, check out my Crumb Coating Video and Tutorial.

If you like, finish with a swirl of Cranberry Ganache. The spiraled edges give an illusion of the cake being much taller than three layers.

Variations

Chocolate Torte: for a single layer, divide the entire recipe by three. Serve with Cranberry Ganache and a dollop of whipped cream on the side.

Gluten Free: replace the all purpose flour with 6 ounces buckwheat flour, 3 ounces cornstarch, and 3 ounces white rice flour. Many thanks to Matt and Theresa for taking this version for a test drive!